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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29279661">The Choice</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerSpectrum/pseuds/InnerSpectrum'>InnerSpectrum</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>February 2021 Johnlock Prompt Challenge [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, February 2021 Johnlock Prompt Challenge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:33:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,916</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29279661</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerSpectrum/pseuds/InnerSpectrum</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>An event from John's past forces him to make a choice...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes &amp; John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>February 2021 Johnlock Prompt Challenge [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138172</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>February 2021 Johnlock prompt challenge from ohlooktheresabee</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Choice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the February 2021 Johnlock Prompt Challenge from ohlooktheresabee. Prompt: Choose</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>John Watson stands in front of the much too familiar grave site with Rosie in his arms.</p><p>He says nothing at first to the woman who stands next to him until the elongated silence drives him to it.</p><p>“I don’t…” He stops, his voice catches and tries again, “I do not understand why you wanted to meet here of all places.”</p><p>“It’s where things ended months ago. It seemed fitting it’s where they should begin again.” She answers softly, her voice apologetic and takes Rosie from his arms as another figure appears.</p><p>And then John <em>knows</em> why…</p><p>He clears his throat in chagrin, refusing to look as Molly and Rosie are greeted and his daughter squeals with delight. Apparently, John was the only surprised by the unusual choice of meeting place. John looks elsewhere until Molly walks away with giggling Rosie. He knows his daughter will be fine with her godmother. It is just as well she’s not here for this in case it goes…wrong. He finally faces the grave again and begins a long overdue conversation.</p><p>“Why…?”</p><p>“Because you have avoided me in your guilt for too long. So, I am here to tell you a few things: One - you did not pull the trigger, John. This is not on you.”</p><p>John clenches his left hand when he feels the intermittent tremors, that always happen when he is engulfed in deep emotions he tries to suppress but cannot, begin anew.</p><p>“No, I did not pull the trigger.” he sighs, “But I will always know I gave the death sentence.”</p><p>His nails dig into his palm as he recalls what brought them here.</p><p>~~~~~~</p><p>Captain John H. Watson had just cleaned his bloodied hands from the binned detritus one field surgery when a severely wounded soldier was all but dropped onto the table in front of him. Hands laid protectively over a profusely bleeding and abdomen.</p><p>Fellow brother-in-arms Lieutenant Allen Hollis dropped to his knees in front of his friend, “Watson, save them!”</p><p>John looked at the soldier on the table, the fact the he personally knew Major Audrey Simmons was already forgotten as he immediately began to triage the patient. In the clarity that emergency workers, but especially army doctors in the field, John immediately knew what he faced, still he was surprised.</p><p>John started yelling orders, another doctor flew to his side in a string of curses as he also realized what they face and John got to work. He knew he had a seventy/thirty chance to save the major; he had much less of a chance to save the unborn, but there was a chance. Both doctors knew the one thing John could not do was save both. Perhaps were they not a military field hospital in the desert the odds would have been better for such, but was this is where they were.</p><p>John glanced at the father who had been pulled away by another doctor, “Hollis, I can’t save both! The major has a chance to live while the child may die out here anyway. But you have to choose.”</p><p>“Watson, please!” Hollis pleaded, “I can’t!”</p><p>“Choose! Now!” John screamed as he tried to perform miracles.</p><p>Hollis chose.</p><p>~~~~~~</p><p>“Choose, Watson!”</p><p>“I can’t! <em>I won’t!</em>”</p><p>His arms ached from wrenched behind him and chained to a chair. Blood trickled down the side of his face from where the fist had connected. His head understandably throbbed.</p><p>None of it mattered compared to what was before him.</p><p>Mary Elizabeth Watson. Former assassin. Currently his wife and the mother of his child was gagged, and bound to her own chair; in front of him, to his right.</p><p>Equally gagged, but even more secured to his chair was William Sherlock Scott Holmes, Consulting Detective. The best man John knows and best friend; was also in front of him, but to his left.</p><p>Beside John with a gun pointed at two of the three most important people in John’s life was former Lt. Hollis.</p><p>Something in the man had slowly snapped at the loss of the child he gave up and of the major he loved who died hours later of her wounds. John had heard rumors that that Hollis had been sectioned out of the army. What John had not heard was that the former lieutenant firmly laid the blame of those losses squarely at the feet of John Watson.</p><p>The former lieutenant has had nearly a decade to foster a hate that cumulated to the desperate moment John found himself in, where Hollis attempted to force him to do what the former army captain had asked of him years ago: choose.</p><p>“That was sacrifice! This is murder! It’s not the same thing.”</p><p>John would not choose.</p><p>All John knew for sure was that Rosie was safe, Hollis will not take his hatred for John out an innocent child, but Hollis would not kill allow John to sacrifice himself to save his wife and best friend. Hollis wanted the doctor, looking in their eyes as he sentenced one to death and suffer with that decision, just like Hollis.</p><p>“Then let me give you incentive.”</p><p>“NO!”</p><p>Two shots rang out.</p><p>Hollis, a marksman like himself, shot Mary and Sherlock in their abdomens and let them bleed. It was the same type of wounds he had lost his family to all those years ago.</p><p>The ticking clock of Sherlock's and Mary’s lives raced forward.</p><p>“Save one or have two more lives on your hands.”</p><p>John knew Mary and Sherlock would let themselves bleed out to spare him this choice.</p><p>Both began to move as much as they could to speed the process, attempting to take the decision out of John’s hand.</p><p>“Stop!” John screamed at them in full captain voice and both stopped out of reflex.</p><p>Hollis took aim again.</p><p>John knew the next time Hollis shot would be a kill shot. He could not allow that.</p><p>“Choose! Now!”</p><p>John sobbed his answer and a shot rang out.</p><p>Hollis’ body fell to the floor at his feet.</p><p>Lesson learned from Magnusson and the bon fire, when the much larger Hollis had overpowered him as he left his surgery shift, John knew the feeling when he felt the injection in his neck. Knowing he only had seconds before unconsciousness, John had just enough wherewithal to activate the hidden tracker in his jacket that Mycroft and Sherlock had insisted he always have on him for just this kind of event.</p><p>John’s head sprang up in hope...</p><p>Mycroft and Lestrade’s people had found them.</p><p>But not in time.</p><p>He screams in despair as only one set of eyes look back at him.</p><p>~~~~~~</p><p>Nearly a year ago John made a choice. The cold black headstone marks that choice. It was an empty grave once. There is an occupant now. An occupant that he put there: Mary Elizabeth Watson.</p><p>“What are the other things?” John asks wearily as he finally looks at the other half of that choice. The one people once thought was in this grave for two years when the headstone had his name on it.</p><p>“Hollis wanted your answer and when you refused, again, is when he shot us in his impatience. All you knew was that Mary and I were bleeding out and if we did not get help soon we were going to die there. You could not let us do that. So, you made a choice and the guilt of it eats at you.” Sherlock reached out and touched the cold black marble of the headstone. “You moved out of the house where you lived with Mary because you could not deal with the ghost of her there. That I understood. What I could not figure out is why you did not come back to Baker Street where you know you belong or why you could barely look at me anymore even though I know you want to.”</p><p>John closes his eyes as he listens. Sherlock is three quarters of the way there to the real truth, but as the genius himself admits, <em>there’s always something</em>.</p><p>“I thought you had no idea Hollis would double cross you and do the opposite.” Sherlock continues.</p><p>“True…” John responds carefully, “I realized that is what you thought. It is what you said the last time we were here.”</p><p>John knows Sherlock catches his meaning.</p><p>“John, I know I call you slow sometimes, but you and I both know, that even now, I am still the one who crawls when it comes to comprehending emotions and how it can affect people. It only came to me recently that you did know he was going to do exactly that. You knew Hollis wanted you to suffer. You <em>knew</em> if you gave him a name to save, that would be who he would kill.”</p><p>John bites his, “but I never gave him a name.”</p><p>“That is why at first I thought that the reason you could not bear to look at me is that the wrong person lived.” Sherlock looks to John.</p><p>“Sherlock, no!” John looks at him aghast, “I never…!”</p><p>“I know… Well, I do now.” Sherlock interrupts him, “Your guilt lays in that you knew that Hollis, like most anyone else, would assume that person would be your wife. And Hollis did <em>exactly</em> what you knew he would do with the knowledge.”</p><p>John looks down, shoving his clenched fist in a pocket as he waits for the rest knowing there is more...</p><p>“I finally came to the realize that you could not look at me these past months is because you thought I would hate or perhaps should hate you for it. After the things I have done…” Sherlock takes John’s hand out of the pocket and holds it, “John, *I* could never…”</p><p>John looks up at Sherlock and nods slowly as he starts to understand.</p><p>“I was gone for two years dismantling Moriarty’s network. It was not pretty work and I don’t mean just what happened to me at the end in Serbia.” It is Sherlock who looks away as he speaks, “For me to condemn you would make me a hypocrite for some of the choices I had made to save the one I love the most.”</p><p>John squeezes the long fingers that hold his as it all comes to him at last.</p><p>He knows Sherlock knows but he feels he needs to say the words out loud, so he does. “Sherlock, when Hollis ordered me to choose, knowing what he was going to do, I said to him ‘<em>I’m saving the one I love the most</em>.’”</p><p>“I know, John. I heard you.” Sherlock returns the squeeze of fingers, “And you did.”</p><p>John knows Molly was on point in making him come here to face Mary, and Sherlock.  </p><p>John still feels the guilt. He does not regret his choice, but he also knows that Hollis got his wish and there is nothing he can do but give it time.</p><p>The last time John left the cemetery he was so guilt filled he had walked away from his choice without a word, not giving either of them a choice. The fear that the love he saved would not want anything to do with him if he understood exactly what he had done is what drove John away. At least now he knows that his fear is unfounded.</p><p>They each take a look at headstone before they leave the cemetery.</p><p>This time it is hand in hand, by their choice.  </p>
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